Abstract
In this and the following chapters, we deal with more realistic cases of income redistribution in which the motives of voters are mixed. In this chapter, we have mainly a theoretical discussion of what I think is a fairly simple case, a case in which the only issue for voters is a transfer to the poorer part of the population and in which the upper-income groups have genuinely charitable motives and hence want to make at least some transfer. It differs from the last chapter in that the poor people will be permitted to vote, too. The situation can be seen in Figure 5.1. Once again we have A and B, who have genuinely charitable intentions with respect to C. The cost of the transfers is shown by a horizontal straight line in the usual way. A’s and B—s demands for a transfer are shown by the appropriate demand curves, and we note that with private provision, C would receive at least B o. The social optimum from the standpoint of A and B only is shown by the sum of lines A and B, or line A + B. This would lead to a transfer of O. All of this is reminiscent of the last chapter.
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References
When Princess Anne was married, the army decided to collect a voluntary gift from its members for her. As is rather characteristic in drives like this (the reader may consider the United Fund as an example), a good deal of pressure was in fact put on, and some of the privates resented it.
Thurow, for example, feels that the highest income an American should receive is no more than five times as much as that of the lowest income American.
Anthony Downs, An Economic Analysis of Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1957): 198–201.
Gordon Tullock and T. Nicholas Tideman, “A New and Superior Process for Making Social Choices,” Journal of Political Economy (October 1976): 1145–1159.
There were also minor discriminations against Protestants in the Catholic Republic of Ireland. Indeed, the Protestant population of the Republic has declined sharply.
Except insofar as police and national defense services probably protect people in proportion to their wealth.
Which might explain the fact that wealthier people pay higher taxes and get fewer services.
Gordon Tullock, “Problems of Majority Voting,” Journal of Political Economy 67 (December 1959): 571–579.
James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962).
See debate in Public Choice beginning with my “Why So Much Stability?,” Public Choice 37(2) (1981): 189–202.
Or group of individuals, through some organized charity.
As part of bargaining maneuvers for future transactions, however, I might accept this arrangement once.
All this is discussed in great detail in Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan, The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962). See also my “Why So Much Stability?,” Public Choice 37(2) (1981): 189–202.
At the moment it is fashonable to refer to the absence of suitable role models. I do not doubt that this is true in many cases, but there are other problems in the educational environment than that.
This, of course, involves nationalism, since the amount is much higher than the average world income.
Some of them are expandable or contractable.
For a striking illustration of this effect, see Edgar K. Browning and William R. Johnson, The Distribution of Tax Burden (Washington, DC: Enterprise Institute’s Studies in Tax Policy, 1979).
Stanley Lebergott, The American Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976): 57.
Sheldon Danzinger, Robert Haveman, and Robert Plotnick, “How Income Transfers Affect Work, Savings and the Income Distribution, ” Journal of Economic Literature 19(3) (September 1981): 975–1028.
Browning and Johnson, The Distribution of Tax Burden, p. 57.
This is partially offset by the fact that households get larger as you move up the income ladder.
Obviously, if the recipients of transfers were not permitted to vote, the very large transfers to the middle and upper classes would not exist. This would lower the total tax burden and very likely benefit the poor. Another comparison is one in which the poor are not permitted to vote but everyone else is, and hence the transfers back and forth in the upper 80 percent of the population would continue.
Worth about US $60,000.
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Tullock, G. (1997). The Mixed Case. In: Economics of Income Redistribution. Studies in Public Choice, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5378-2_5
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